Glacier Mountaineering Society

Sat, Sep 24 2011 - Edwards Mountain (View Original Event Details)

Coordinator(s):		Tim Anderson
Participants:		Larry Hiller, Alan Gregory, Tim Anderson, Paul Cogswell, Don Arthur, Jim Foster

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Write Up:
It was a sunny hot day in late September with temperatures about 20F above normal.

It was still dark when we arrived at the parking lot, five of us headed up the Sperry trail at 7am. We kept a brisk pace and reached Comeau Pass at 11:30. We found Jim Foster waiting for us there; he had spent the night at Sprerry.

Having never climbed this mountain before, I had listed this climb as a class 3 based on the description from Gordon Edward’s book which claimed it’s a class 2-3 “if the proper route is followed”. The plan was to follow that route. But our plans had to change. A couple quotes from that route follow.

“Leave the trail just above the stairway and proceed northward along the east side. When an easy-appearing route is seen; walk up the talus slopes and scramble the small class3 cliffs to the ridge top”. We could not do that, it would have taken us across some steep snow fields that we were not equipped for, so we did what many before us have done and head up the ridge that starts right there.

Jim took the lead. The ridge is beyond class three in places, but it has some of the most solid climbing rock I have seen in Glacier Park, very little of the crumbly stuff you find elsewhere. It was a real treat to climb on. About half way up one of our crew felt the class 4 stuff we were in was beyond his comfort level, so he elected to stop and wait for the rest of us to summit and return. “Once atop the summit ridge, it is a short, easy, remarkable walk to the true summit”, Remarkable yes, easy no. When we reached the east point of the summit ridge we found that the ridge walk over to the summit is not a walk, the entire distance required climbing and route finding to navigate all the blocky rock that make up the top of this mountain. We reached the summit cairn at 1pm and found the thin metal box left as a summit log in 1921, but it has been damaged and contained no logs. A few people have scratched their names in the metal.

After enjoying the views and eating a late lunch we headed back, picked up Paul and head back to the cars. Totals for the day were 21 miles and 5800 vertical feet in 11.5 hours.

Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Tim Anderson at twamontana@gmail.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.